most important thing in my life.”
That commitment was evident. “How is your dad?”
“The cancer is in remission and the doctors are optimistic.”
“I’m pleased,” she said sincerely.
“Any other questions?”
“Not a question, really…”
“Go on.”
“Lewis said you do have a sense of humor, but I’d need a pick, a shovel and funding from a major mining corporation before I found it.”
His lips twitched but he managed not to give in to a smile, which, judging by the two he had already bestowed on her, was a real shame.
“Lewis is a good friend and a fine lawyer but he talks too much.” He motioned for the waiter. “Are you ready to leave?”
Annie nodded. She reached for the bill but Jared beat her to it, casting a frown that would have intimidated a lot of people in this room.
“Call me old fashioned, but when I take a lady out for a meal, I pay the bill.” He left enough to cover the cost and a generous tip. “If we go ahead with this, you’ll find I’m old-fashioned in a lot of ways.”
Annie felt a surge of pleasure to know that the man who very well could be her future husband believed in chivalry.
“You mean like opening doors, and waiting until a woman is seated before sitting down?”
“Among other things,” he replied, tucking his wallet back in his trouser pocket. “So if you’re a rabid feminist who believes men shouldn’t protect their women or try to make life easier for them, now is the time to say so.”
“I can live with that. Just so long as you remember that I’m no wilting violet, Jared. I’m capable, intelligent and more than willing to pull my own weight.”
“I think we’ll make a good team,” he said finally. “Lewis told me you don’t have a vehicle. I’ll save you the bus ride and drive you.”
The drive back to her apartment in the city was slowed down by rush hour traffic. “How big is your farm?” she asked.
He checked the rearview mirror of his four-wheel-drive truck and indicated before changing lanes. “Dad’s place has thirty thousand acres but I’m also working the land that James and Sara owned and it’s about the same size. A lot of it is just grazing land and some of that I lease out to other farmers, but I’ve got crops in.”
His words sparked a memory and Annie smiled. “When I was young and Mum was passed out I’d climb the big hill behind our old house and sit there looking out at the fields. The purple Patterson’s Curse. Yellow rapeseed. The brown of newly turned earth. And then the green fields. It always reminded me of a patchwork quilt.”
“You and my mother will get along like a house on fire. She calls our little corner of the world God’s canvas. According to her, the shades of nature are His watercolors and the goodness of men is His inspiration.”
“Your mother always was a wise woman. Very few people take the time to see the world like that.”
“She’s one in a million, all right.”
Later, when she was alone, she would sort through her emotions, but she couldn’t help but wonder what his life had been like before the Campbells had taken him into their family.
“What kind of animals do you have?”
“Sheep, milking cows, hens and horses.”
“Milking cows?” she queried. “You milk them and use it?”
That got an amused grin out of him. “Where did you think we’d get our milk?”
“I was hoping you’d say you stock up regularly from the store in town. I guess it’s too much to hope that you don’t butcher your own meat.”
He chuckled again. “Afraid so.”
He pulled into the parking garage under her building.
“Once we’re married—if we get married—will you teach me about being a farmer’s wife?”
“You won’t need teaching,” he replied, his eyes softer, his voice a deep baritone. “You’ll learn it as you live it.”
He got out of the vehicle and came around to her side, helping her down and escorting her to the elevator. As they waited, Annie knew the time had come to tell him about her past.
“Adoption saves so many children from never knowing love,” she said and began gathering the courage that had allowed her to contemplate marrying him. “You’re adopted. You know how well it can work. You’ll be able to help them through any transitions they have to make.”
She opened her mouth to tell him the secret only two other people had known, but the dark expression on his face, and the narrowing of those blue eyes, stopped her.
His jaw was clenched tight. “My life turned out better than I could ever have hoped when I came to live with the Campbells,” he said, an odd note of emotion gone before she could identify it.
“But I will never understand how a mother—any mother—can give up her child.”
A chill of foreboding washed over her. He was deadly serious. She could barely breathe. How could she marry him and keep the secret? She couldn’t lie, not to him, not about this.
A marriage built on a lie was set down on a foundation that would in the end crumble and hurt many people. Lies festered and boiled inside a person like an open wound.
Yet the alternative was to tell him and see the look of disgust on his face. He would call the whole thing off. She would not get to be a mother to the children. She would not be able to repay Sara for the friendship and the love she had shown her. Please God, she prayed silently, don’t let this fall apart now.
Her heartbeat accelerated. Her hands began to tremble ever so slightly and she realized why Lewis had suggested she not tell Jared about her past.
“You make adoption sound like the easy way out.”
“Isn’t it?”
The elevator pinged and opened for them. She pushed the button for her floor and waited, watching him, her breath lodged somewhere in her throat, her palms sweating.
“I look at Sara’s children and I know I’d die for them. I’m not even related by blood. How can a mother who gives birth to a child not have those same feelings…even stronger ones?”
The words were out of her mouth before she even thought about it. “There are cases, like Caroline’s for example, that are horrifying, but there are women out there who do it out of love for their children.”
She continued on, not even realizing how it might sound to him; she just said what was in her heart. “Giving up a child you love, never to see him or her again, is one of the most difficult decisions a woman in that position has to make.”
His gaze locked with hers instantly and Annie knew this was the moment to make her choice…to tell him and end it now or to keep silent about her past, about Toby, and try to live with the guilt she knew would compound day by day.
“I’ve watched television programs on adoption, read books written by woman who have gone through it…I even know a woman who did it,” she said quietly, swallowing the half truth and hating the aftertaste.
His expression remained as dark as it had been since the discussion was started. “But still they hand their children away like consolation prizes in a raffle.”
“I think you would find most mothers try to find a loving family who can give the child everything she isn’t in a position to.”
“Or doesn’t want to be bothered with.”
Annie